Resumen (otros idiomas)

In “The Economic Possibilities of Conservation” [1913], Lewis Gray reinterpreted from an economic point of view the idea of conservation which had popularized the American Conservation Movement. He linked intergenerational equity and non-renewable resource extraction rate. Gray’s article can be considered as an antecedent of two significant debates in modern natural resource economics. On the one hand, it is a direct precedent of the environmental discussion about the meaning of discounting. On the other, it is an important element in the historical conformation of the sustainability debate.

Crabbé, P. (1983). The Contribution of L.C. Gray to the Economic Theory of Exhaustible Natural Resources and Its Roots in the History of Economic Thought. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 10(3): 195-220.

Dorman, R.L. (1998). A Word for Nature: Four Pioneering Environmental Advocates, 1845-1913. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press.

Ekirch, A.A. (1963). Man and Nature in America. New York: Columbia University Press.

Ely, R.T. (1918). Conservation and Economic Theory. In R.T. Ely, R.H. Hess, C.K. Leith, and T.N. Carver, The foundations of national prosperity: studies in the conservation of permanent national resources, New York: Macmillan.